Welcome to my weekly editorial! There’s a lot to talk about this week, and it’s more important than usual, so I’ve released the editorial early.
Congratulations!
Last week I led off my editorial in congratulating my friend Jessica Pratesi for winning three games on Countdown in the UK. I’m pleased to report that she continued on her winning ways this week, sweeping the week and becoming an octochamp! She’ll be returning for the Series 89 finals in June.
Another Announcement From New York City
It was lost a little bit last night in the Amy Schneider news, but news started to trickle out of the Inside Jeopardy! event in New York City late last night that Kids Week, Teen Tournament, and College Championship alumni will have eligibility restored for the main program. I’m sure that more specific details of this news will be revealed in the coming weeks.
Ugh! Not Another Stock Photo Mislabelling Mishap!
It’s clear that Jeopardy!‘s research department needs to change how it handles stock photos after another mislabeled stock photo on Friday caused a headache for the show on social media. This one was caused by stock photo provider Alamy, who have what many people claim to be a peregrine falcon labeled as a Cooper’s hawk.
After the similar issue surrounding the Angus cattle earlier in the season, it’s become increasingly clear that certain stock photo sites should not be blindly trusted to be correct, and their claims need to be properly cross-referenced—because it’s making the show look silly.
My friends over at Geeks Who Drink have introduced a daily trivia game—Thrice! Existing to make daily clever trivia content accessible to a wide audience, it's a daily challenge that tries to get you to the answer via three separate clues. It has a shareable score functionality to challenge your friends and new questions every day will give you a new daily social ritual. You can find it at thricegame.com.
Are you going on the show and looking for information about how to bet in Final Jeopardy? Check out my Betting Strategy 101 page. If you want to learn how to bet in two-day finals, check out Betting Strategy 102. In case the show uses a tournament with wild cards in the future, there is also a strategy page for betting in tournament quarterfinals.
Are you looking for information on how to stream Jeopardy! in 2024? Find out information here on how to stream from most places in North America!
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You can find game-by-game stats here at The Jeopardy! Fan of all 17 players, now including Adriana Harmeyer, that have won 10 or more games on Jeopardy!
You can now listen to Alex Trebek-hosted Jeopardy! episodes from TuneIn Radio without leaving The Jeopardy! Fan — listen now!
Something To Remember When Suggesting Tournament Formats Online
Ever since Michael Davies has fully taken over and not run tournaments that were inherited from Mike Richards, it is very clear that wild card advancement in tournaments is not a mechanic that the show wishes to use any longer.
Whether that is because it makes gameplay and wagering counterintuitive and less aggressive to the home viewer, or because one could easily find strategy guides for “playing for the wildcard” is immaterial. The fact of the matter is that the old wild card system is a clear thing of the past under the current production team. To be fair: I agree with the show’s stance here—I routinely saw viewers confused online during tournament quarterfinals, some going as far to even trash players for not making cover bets in Final Jeopardy.
There is definitely room for creativity, here, though: for example, ranking players by “score entering Final Jeopardy” or even Coryat score would allow for the usual Final Jeopardy strategies to play out without rankings being affected by them. But past “wild card” formats are seen as too counterintuitive to the home viewer to be viable in 2024.
We have many new offerings at The Jeopardy! Fan Online Store! Here are our current featured items, including our new Masters Season 3 Player List T-shirt:
Who Else Would You Pick? Seriously.
Some corners of the Internet—I’m not going to single out specific areas this time, but there are multiple in this case—were upset at the announcement yesterday that Amy Schneider was the Producer’s Pick for Masters. And I don’t exactly understand why people are so upset.
To these fans, I have a serious question: Who else would you pick?
If you pick anyone who was in the Tournament of Champions or Jeopardy Invitational Tournament field, the same general objections to Amy’s selection carry over: Why is not winning the Tournament of Champions any different from not winning in the Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament?
If your pick was someone not in the JIT or ToC fields: Some of these same spaces on the Internet lost their collective mind last week over players being asked to play JIT on short notice—how is it now okay to ask someone who hasn’t played in 4-5 years to come in on a month’s notice to play Masters?
In light of the above two paragraphs, I think that a lot of the criticism of the show on the Internet in the last 18 hours is unfair and unwarranted. And, quite frankly, I do honestly believe that as much as I’ve criticized Amy’s gameplay at this level over the past 12 months, that I’ve also noticed improvements—her Final Jeopardy bet in Game 3 of the JIT final for starters—that I honestly believe she has a reasonable chance of advancing far in this iteration of the series.
Here’s A Google Search I Suggest You Make
“PGA Tour ratings when Tiger Woods is in contention”.
As much as I’m sure there is a small minority of longtime golf “diehards” who don’t want to watch Tiger Woods play golf anymore, more people watch TV coverage of a golf tournament when Tiger Woods is playing in it. Even in 2023 and 2024. Other golfers like Bryson DeChambeau may be better, but they don’t move the ratings needle like Tiger does.
I’m sure the parallel is obvious.
Another Reminder
A group of the 100 loudest people do not—they inherently can not, in my opinion—speak representatively for ten million—or even the self-selecting most diehard 100,000 of that ten million.
In Closing
My Jeopardy! Masters Season 2 preview will be coming out before taping begins this week; I hope you enjoy it!
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I’d put Troy Meyer, Sam Buttrey, and Andrew He in Masters
Yeah, you (or anyone else who just throws names out there) are going to need to actually defend this one.
Troy is a lot better than Amy, he led more games going into Final Jeopardy than Amy in the TOC finals
1) you named 3 people;
2) Would Troy win the buzzer battle over Amy?
Probably, he has more attempts
As much as I like Sam and Andrew (and would enjoy seeing them in any game), I do not see them picked over Amy, based either on recent performance or all time results.
I would enjoy seeing Troy (or Chris P) in the Masters in what would be some new match-ups of champions.
How about seeing Chuck Forrest in a Masters.
I’ve never seen so many people completely miss the point in my comments in one day before.
The main reason I’d prefer a TOC person is that it would give us only 3 carryovers from last year instead of four. I’d be more ok with having a repeat four, given the format of “the last top three automatically return next year”, if it was a flat winner who made it in, but it’s still a matchup I’m less interested in seeing given we’ve seen all these matchups before. I’d much rather see a bunch of new matchups, with one matchup repeating from last year a few times if that trio all get past round 1 again, than have a minimum of four repeat matchups.
It also opens the question to, what if Andrew He had won JIT? If that happened and Amy had been picked, we’d be at 5 of the same people as last year.
Overall, I think Amy is definitely deserving and skilled, but to answer the “Who Else Would You Pick?” I would either go with Ben or Troy, or the longest streak winner from last season (which I believe is why Matt and Mattea made it in last year), than someone who didn’t win JIT who is also a repeat contender from last year.
In writing this, despite liking Troy and Ben a lot and thinking Sam did not have a great performance in the TOC, I’d make “longest recent win streak” be the metric and he’d be my pick.
The number of people who have insisted upon answering a rhetorical question today is mind-boggling.
I think it’s fair that people in the comments section would engage with a rhetorical question you posited multiple times in your editorial. It isn’t really any different than if you had stated “Amy is a great pick, deal with it”–I assume people would probably respond to that if they felt differently.
I like Amy, and she’s clearly part of the elite group that qualifies as Masters material. If the obvious choice in Brad wasn’t available though (and he is definitely still elite/sharp based on his performance at James’ “Titan Throwdown” charity event last August!), I think Troy was the next best pick, on the balance. His TOC performance shows that he can play at a Masters level, and using the pick on new blood would both keep the Masters competition fresh and preserve the integrity of the whole relegation aspect of this format.
I get that they probably have polling that shows Amy draws ratings, and I’m sure that 95% of the fans probably don’t even understand the whole pyramid concept in the first place, so I doubt most people will care. So I can understand the decision. But for many of us who do follow closely, and are extremely supportive of the “sportification” direction Davies is taking things, this decision does feel like a slight misstep.
I’ll still be watching, obviously–the gameplay should be thrilling!–but I also think its fair for fans to comment in a respectful way when they disagree with a decision. And thankfully, despite the odd temporary removal of the announcement thread on Reddit last night, most of the commentary I’ve read seemed quite respectful/constructive.
(I think the fact that they picked a fan favourite probably helped here–most people love Amy, but are just a bit underwhelmed by the decision.)
I agree with you, John. My personal preference, though, would be for them to only have a Masters Tournament about every 3 years so it would seem less a Do-Over no matter who gets on it. Of course I have no expectations of them giving up something that brings prime-time ratings (as well as doing as much as they can while network broadcasting is still viable), but I am going to watch every time they have it no matter how often and whether I agree with their choice of who is on it or not. And I suppose various social media comments — pro or con — is just free advertising (especially to those who CAN watch network TV but rarely do, so do not see many network commercials) that it IS going to be on without being likely to influence hardly anyone to not watch it.
On the other hand, a positive aspect of having many of the same players on ‘Masters’ in sequential years is that if a viewer had a favorite but they didn’t win, the viewer will probably come back in hopes of seeing their favorite win this time.
“I don’t understand”, “I have a serious question” and “Why is not winning the TOC any different” – none of that read as rhetorical to me. “Serious question” reads to me as “I am actively confused by this and do not understand the perspective, can someone explain” as long as it’s going over new points not brought up in the original post, which is what I tried to do.
Apologies for missing the intent, but this all read to me as genuine questions with no hint that they were meant to be rhetorical.
On the Tiger Woods question… I hope I speak for most golf diehards when I say that we’re fine with the coverage of Tiger – IF he’s in contention. But time after time, we end up with main broadcasts like Friday’s, where we got three separate live looks at Tiger on the range, and then Tiger standing at the first tee, and then every one of his shots in his round, as well as far too numerous shots of Tiger just, well, walking to his ball, or to the next tee, and it always ends with the agonizingly long shot of Tiger walking to the clubhouse after his round is over.
We get that EVERY TIME he plays, no matter if he’s in contention or not. And that just drives me up the wall. Good thing that the Masters website has a multitude of other live camera shots I could watch, just so I could avoid watching the main feed on TV and get subjected to wall-to-wall coverage of a guy who’s currently outside the top 20 at of this post.
Yes, I know that Tiger drives ratings… but nobody’s asking for the endless shots of him just standing around or walking to his next shot, over and over again. We’ve got 59 other players who made the cut for this weekend, yet we already know that CBS will just flood us with endless shots of Tiger, no matter where he is in the standings. Even when he’s done, you know that it’s a certainty that CBS will give us a video recap of his round at least once, if not 3 or 4 times, no matter how he shot. Meanwhile, we’ll have 59 other golfers on the course, and I can guarantee you that half of them won’t appear on the CBS telecast a single time.
Maybe you knew you were [and maybe it was your intent], but you are just underscoring Andy’s point AND making it clear that CBS gets the point, too.
I see a possibility that Tiger is a huge draw for viewers because a lot of them hope to see him make a big comeback and a lot of them hope to see him blow it (and probably CBS knows it). I think that unfortunately Amy is in a similar situation (and probably ABC knows it).
Just for fun, I decided to count every shot that CBS decided to show us on their main broadcast today, and just seven players had at least 14 of their shots shown live.
Six of those players are currently in the top 8 of the leaderboard… and the other one was Tiger, who just shot the worst round of his entire Masters career.
Tiger’s played 99 rounds at Augusta and today’s 82 was the worst of them all… yet CBS still – STILL – couldn’t help but show us 23 of those shots today. CBS even led the broadcast with Tiger, even though he was a good 12 or 13 shots out of the lead when the broadcast started (he’s now a full 18 shots back, yet it just doesn’t matter to CBS).
By comparison, Xander Schauffele (another crowd favorite) played the only bogey-free round of the day and is just five shots out of the lead – yet CBS showed a grand total of three of Xander’s shots. The four players currently tied for 9th saw a combined 18 shots covered live, still 5 less than Tiger.
Even fan favorite Rory McIlroy, who finished a full eight shots ahead of Tiger, had just one of his shots shown on air. One.
CBS’ love affair with Tiger was just ridiculous today, especially for someone having the worst round of his entire Masters career.
I wonder if perhaps a system where the producers put up ~5 choices and home viewers vote online for who among the five they’d most like to see a la certain reality shows might not be a better way to go about it.
The purists would hate it. But they already hate the current system.
In other words—I kinda hope that Michael Davies sees your comment and implements this.
One possibility for fun; Muffy Marracco. Certainly in trivia shape already as a Mastermind, great personality, has experience under the lights.
LOL!!!
I don’t understand this reply. It was a serious comment. If Brandon Blackwell or Victoria Groce can make the jump, why not her?
Given how things worked out, I think having Amy as the Producer’s Pick was 100% fair and probably the right call.
One thing I do want to get your opinion on though, if you’re willing to share, do you think Brad should have to play in the JIT? I was under the self-imposed impression that the Producer’s Pick was going to be it’s own separate thing meant to give players like Brad and other future 20+ game champs who don’t win the ToC a chance to play anyways. I still really struggle to see why Brad is being asked to play in the JIT rather than locking him up as a Producer’s Pick to get him straight through before anything is even played; I think it’s even more mind boggling based on Sam/Andrew/etc being automatic Masters in S1. I would genuinely be curious what you think though!
I think that inviting JIT #2 sets a potentially dangerous precedent going forward. It feels like it could be a matter of “we’ll invite #2 if they’re likeable or famous enough but if not we’ll pick someone else”. I get Jeopardy is a TV show, but it definitely betrays the “only people who climb to the top of the pyramid ” aspect imo. I also think that it makes the finals significantly less interesting: 1st place is through no matter what with an extra 50k, 2nd place is maybe sorta through we’ll see how we feel like ratings would be, 3rd place is out. I think the stakes would feel significantly lower.
Could be many variations on whether #2 gets picked in future (i.e., what kind of precedent this season sets) – did #2 win 1 game? what if both those who did not win, did win 1 game apiece?
Wonder how much of wanting to limit number of “Masters” players in the club, making it more exclusive. One way is inviting all 3 of finalists back.
I enjoyed this discussion (and appreciate Andy letting it run a bit). It’s like discussions of “who’s better” LeBron or Michael, or debating players across eras, how deserves to be in Hall of Fame, who’s the GOAT? …
Edward ‘Eddie’ Simmons:
Which do you prefer, Sinatra or Mathis?
Robert ‘Boogie’ Sheftell:
I like Presley.
Diner 1982
What day will the Masters preview come out?
To echo some of the above: By all of the measures that count, Amy is the best of the rest (of us). If for any reason Brad is turning down the invitation to either Masters or JIT then I agree, Amy is the best possible choice. Also, she’s cool to hang out with and has a noticeable fan base, which certainly doesn’t hurt.
However I think there is room to be disappointed with the appearance/presentation of the selection process, as it comes of as opaque and top-down. Much like the college football playoff selection process, no matter the outcome people will always be ticked off by the appearance of those in power influencing the winners and losers. The good news is that the Jeopardy post season is still in its infancy, and I think everyone involved wants it to be as good as possible. So it should improve and adapt for many years in the future.
Andy,
You’re absolutely right about Amy being the obvious choice. Heck, Chris P couldn’t even get past the quarterfinals in the ToC (and he would be the only one I would have put ahead of Amy). But there is a sizeable portion of the fan community who love Amy. As much as I’d love to see Chris P or Hannah again (maybe bring them in for a future invitational?), and as Sam points out, Amy has a built-in fan base who will watch the Masters and that is going to be ratings-driven. Keep in mind that when they cast the show, it’s not based solely on how one performs on the online test; there’s an ‘interview’ component to casting to ensure that a contestant isn’t going to be a dud on the stage.
“New matchups” be damned, the point is to have the best players on that stage, and Amy’s history clearly makes her the best player who wasn’t one of the five already qualified (and quite possibly better than at least one of the three holdovers). Matt and Mattea weren’t in because they were the longest streaks of the prior season; there were three streaks of over 20 wins in the season, which made Season 38 a very unique circumstance were three of the greatest players of all time all appeared in the same season and there could only be one ToC champion.
If you’re going to avoid Masters just because Amy is on the show, just admit why you don’t want her this isn’t about gameplay or history. You don’t get to be a 40-day champion if you’re a chump on the buzzer. Just admit that you are one of the very vocal minority who dislike someone because of who they are. It would be refreshing and honest.
To shift the analogy from golf to college football, it’s beginning to feel like Amy is the Ohio State of Jeopardy players. If a TV executive thinks they’re a ratings draw (whether they are or not), processes will be manipulated to create the desired outcome.
This is no slight on Amy. You don’t get to be in this spot if you’re not really, really good. But if it looks like the TV people (in this case, Michael Davies) have a thumb on the scale to your benefit, it necessarily diminishes you.
Given that, and some of Andy’s comments above, it’s not entirely clear whether a reply like this is welcome, but taking Andy at his word when he asks, “Seriously, who would you pick?” here is what I would have done differently:
1) Announce the Producer’s Pick prior to the taping of JIT. This solves two problems. One, it gives the Producer’s Pick time to prepare. And two, it makes JIT a true qualifier for Masters. If you win you’re in, if you lose you’re out. This is what we were told it would be at the outset. The whole point of eliminating Wild Cards (and, by and large, two-game total-point affairs) from tournament play was that this is Jeopardy, and you play to win the game because if you lose you’re out. Making somebody who lost during JIT the Producer’s Pick for Masters, thereby nullifying the effect of their loss, feels like bait-and-switch.
2) It’s hard to beat “finalist in a seven-figure tournament” as a qualifying criteria for a “Jeopardy Master.” So, my list starts with Brad Rutter. And I need to hear a firm no from him, Roger Craig, and Jerome Vered before I move down the list.
The show made it clear on this week’s Inside Jeopardy: you have to have played recently and proven you can still be competitive at this level in order to get a spot in Masters. It’s not willing to risk a spot on someone who might end up like Brad in GOAT; the show wants players in their prime, not past it.
Three points here, from back to front:
— The case could be made that Amy at Masters last year was worse than Brad at GOAT. Amy has 12 losses in her last 19 tournament games, including losing 5 of 6 at Masters last year. She had her chance. She had another chance to win her way back in. She lost, repeatedly. Sorry, MD. Time to find a new darling.
— There is somebody who has “played recently” (within the last 5 years) and “proven to be competitive at this level” (multiple wins over players with multiple wins, including multiple wins over someone in the Masters field) who doesn’t also have 13 losses on her record, and yet Emma Boettcher hasn’t darken the door of Sony since the last time she beat James. If these are the criteria, the only explanation for why Amy and not Emma is producer whim.
— “Proven you can still be competitive at this level” is still more code for “producer whim.” Proven to whom? At what level? What constitutes “competitive?” How can someone have “played recently” without being invited to do so by the producers? And how do you know whether someone is “in their prime” or not unless/until you, you know, watch them play the game?
Sorry, Andy. When faced with a difficult question, the podcast, yet again, gave a non-answer answer, with no opportunity for follow-up. Unfortunately, this is what I’ve come to expect from the current management of the show. I wish I could say I was disappointed.